Toni Hammer

I guess the title is misleading. It makes it sound like my toddler wasn’t wearing pants. And he wasn’t. But I really want to explain to you why I didn’t have pants on while crawling after my toddler.

It all started with poop. The best stories do.

Both kids were in my lap as we watched “Let It Go” on YouTube for conservatively the 812th time that day. I still like the song, they kind of sit still, and Lillian is adorable when she sings along. She does the hand motions too. It’s great.

So we’re all sitting, watching the computer, when I smell something. Oh geez, one of the kids pooped. There went that cute moment. Well, I’ll just wait until this is over.

“Let it go, let it go…”

Why is my leg wet?

I look down, and Levi had managed to not only poop, but somehow completely miss the diaper. I don’t even know what happened. Sometimes the stars are aligned just right, the diaper’s on just wrong, and everything comes pouring out.

Some days it’s hard to decide which I hate more: Lillian hitting me or Lillian ignoring me.

The hitting doesn’t happen too often, and most of the time it occurs at night when she’s just over tired and needs to go to sleep. It’s like her saying, “Mom, I’m going to hit you in the face, but it’s just me asking if I can go to bed early.” Kinda cute, right?

The ignoring thing, though, that drives me up a wall. It’s her silent tantrum. Rather than just throw a fit, she pretends not to hear me.

Due to my lack of concern, I’ve stopped offering my opinion on parenting things because most moms find me a bit too cut and dry for their taste. But no more! Here are ten no-nonsense, hyper-honest pieces of unwanted advice:

1. Your child will sleep through the night when they feel like it. There is nothing you can do to make it magically happen. You can try swaddling, unswaddling, loading them up on rice cereal, a bedtime routine, a dance routine, etc. You know what will actually work? Time and patience.

2. Babies will survive ten seconds without you so you can go pee. Or even seven minutes so you can take a quick shower. If they’re fed and clean and in a safe place, they’ll be fine. Go to the bathroom alone while you still can.

3. You don’t need a fancy changing table. A blanket works just fine as does a towel, shirt, or if you’re feeling lucky, nothing at all. Put ’em down on the floor and break a new speed record out of fear that any second they will poop all over your carpet.Read More »10 No-Nonsense Tips for Parents

Last week, I laid Lillian and Levi down for a nap in the same room. Levi still sleeps in our bedroom at night, but since someday I’d like to enter my room after 7 p.m. without the fear of God in me, I’m slowly trying to get them to learn to sleep in the same room. Separate cribs of course, though on many occasions I’ve been tempted to throw them into the same crib for a toddler death match.

They weren’t sleeping. I had the video baby monitor on, but I could hear them from the dining room table where I was attempting to work. I just let them talk and babble away because, hey, they may not be sleeping, but at least they’re not crying or pulling on me or asking for cheese.

In the midst of working hard (okay, I was checking Twitter) I heard Lillian’s sweet voice saying, “Mom.. Mom… Mo-om…” Generally she does this when she’s pooped. The potty training thing isn’t going super well because I’m lazy, but at least she’s kind enough to tell me after she’s pooped so that’s something I guess.

I sighed because if I went in there to change her, I’d disrupt the whole notion of nap time and I really didn’t want to do that. I would leave and they would both throw a fit and the whole ordeal would begin again and they would never sleep. On the other hand… I didn’t want my daughter to have poop in her diaper. Call me a softy, but that doesn’t seem like something a “mom of the year” would do and I’m really going for that title this year.Read More »“I’m a Bad Mom” Monday: No, You Can’t Climb on Your Dresser